An extra SPOOKY Memo from Phil 10/29

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them. -Christian Nestell Bovee

It’s Halloween and this year, many ghoulish characters will be showing up at the door of your agency. Those aren’t costumes they are wearing; they are the real thing. They are freaks; never see them as anything else.

Now I don’t want you to live in fear. But you need to be aware of who they are and what they do to your agency. So, I’m going to take a minute and identify them and what to do if you see one of them visiting your organization this week.

The Ghost. He shows up when you’ve dropped something essential; like recruiting and hiring for any periods of time. When I evaluate all our MGA’s, I see this guy show up a lot. The MGA recruits and hires well for a few weeks and then nothing. It’s not really a hiring system, but more like a hiring spurt. And so you see them get 2 or 3 great agents, and then a long period of time where they hire no one or one person. Where there should be the next wave of codes and new life, there is just a….ghost. Drive the ghost hires out of your agency. Fill your reception area with real people, real candidates every week, month, so you don’t have ghosts where agents should have been.

The Headless Horseman. According to legend, a cannonball took off everything above his shoulders in one fateful shot. But he didn’t die; he roams your agency, looking very real and making a lot of commotion. But he is headless. He has no foresight, no vision of where your agency is and where it needs to go. If you find yourself spinning in circles and not moving forward, or gaining ground, you may take a week, collect yourself, your head in particular, and come to your agency with a new or fresh vision of where you are going and how you are going to get there.

Dracula/The Vampire. These usually show up in the home. They take all the response cards and set appointments but don’t collect or present referrals. They suck the lead base, which costs millions a year, but never replenish it with anything that they generated or created. And ultimately, leads, which are the life blood of both their agency and our organization gets drained.And their agency dies. True to their thirst for hard cards, they sometimes come back after draining the leads they have and ask for more. Without ever replenishing this life-giving resource. And the body slowly dies, they have no more leads and they die off as well. The vampire. They are easy to spot, as long as you’re paying attention to your resources. Make sure to jump in right away if you see one of these in your agency, before they start sucking out all your valuable resources and leave you with nothing.

The Phantom. These guys are similar to ghosts, except, you actually did interview, recruit and hire. And then didn’t actively carry them to code, and so now they didn’t make it or might have written one deal or two and then poof, they vanished. They are a phantom agent. You didn’t really have them. You only saw them for a brief moment before they became invisible. Some agencies have almost becomes recruiting companies that occasionally train and develop. Instead of being training and developing companies that occasionally hire. Believe you me. If you provide world-class training and develop your people as leaders, your recruiting needs for you and your agency will decrease.

The Goblin. These are small green, or greenish-yellow creatures with pointy features and high intelligence. If they are so intelligent, then what’s there to be afraid of? That’s actually part of the problem. Goblins show up in your agency and they know all the answers. They can do anything better, better than your manager, your RGA, even 30 years of development. They often are negative and aren’t happy unless they make others around them as negative and ugly as they are. Remember, it’s often much easier for a negative person to sway a positive person, than vice versa. That’s the power and destructiveness they possess. Get after goblins as soon as you see them lurking around. Exterminate them if necessary, because they can multiply and take on a herd mentality.

The Skeleton. These guys are pretty easy to identify. They earn an advance. And that’s it. Advances are important. And the American Income Life’s contract is a solid one. They give the agent or MGA enough cashflow to run their business. But there’s nothing else. No WGB Bonus, no Leadership Bonus, no Agent Tenure Bonus, No Reinstatement Bonus. Just the skeleton advance. Sometimes forensic artists will take a skeleton that they’ve found but couldn’t identify and draw what the full person would have looked like. And it is a dramatic improvement. Take any skeletons in your agency and start putting the good stuff on their skimpy bones. Bonuses. Maybe even a Presidents or Founders Club ring on them, and see how much better they look and stronger they are.

The Zombie. He shows up when you start dumping bad business into your uploads. You know the one that I’m talking about. You know he or she is sick, and they probably can’t be underwritten. But you’d like the advance next week, so you put him in the batch. And sure enough, they were not accepted. But he’s not done haunting you yet. Not he enters back through a chargeback, and then he comes back out of the ground when your renewal pays out, and just when you thought you’ve seen the last of him, you lose a bonus or Convention or promotion, because instead of incinerating that app when you knew it probably wouldn’t make it through, you put him in the ground and thought that’s the last you would see of him. Always test for Zombies by using the Trial App test, to see if he’s really on your side or will come back to stalk you for weeks and months to come.

#1. Territory in the company. Tennessee. $47,414. What are they doing? When I look at their numbers, the first big change is…Referrals Collected. They’re now picking up 700 to 800. How do referrals bump sales that much? They keep you in a tighter geographic area, they increase your presentations and they have a high closing ratio. That’s a trifecta. That also bumps their total ALP to $82,000+. Nashville and Knoxville are turning up a little bit of rivalry here. Nashville beats Knoxville, $34K to $30K this week, but I think they’re pretty evenly matched. Ashlynn Orng is the super hero here. Over $26,000 in her agency alone. 12 coded and 12 writing agents. All hands were on deck. Houvener Hunter’s MGA-ship leads Knoxville with $13K.

#2. Washington. $27,544. What jumps out? A 79% show ratio. They’ve got 700 referrals as well. Referred clients are more likely to show up, the leads are newer and it’s more personal. Redmond, Lynnwood and Vancouver all had solid weeks. Redmond averaged $2,634 per agent. Lynnwood closed 37% and Vancouver bumped up there agent count to 10 already, so everybody’s doing at least one thing spectacularly well.

#3. Utah. $25,556. Their new agents average $1,345. That’s hot.Patrick Reiger is leading well. $2,835 ALP per agent in their office. Trevor Mayer actually turned in the most ALP at $13,000.

#4. California. $24,225. Huntington Beach. Josh Olin and Dave Thornton are teaming up to blow that office up. $20K for Josh and over $10K in Dave’s agency.